Evo 2013 sets record numbers for Twitch

This weekend, Twitch streamed most of the matches from the 2013 Evolution Championship Series tournament. It took place at the Bally's Las Vegas Hotel and Casino, which most of us probably couldn't attend despite the tournament being spread across more than 90,000 square feet, so the streams allowed us to watch the severe digital beatings from afar. Twitch vice president of Marketing Matthew DiPietro told USgamer that 1.7 million unique visitors tuned in over the weekend, with Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 leading in the number of concurrent viewers.

"Twitch can confirm that 144,848 was the max concurrent viewership for the day for [Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3] with some of the estimates for other games being 134,000 for [Super Smash Brothers Melee] and 125,000 for [Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition v. 2012]. They were record breaking numbers for each of those fighting games with Evo smashing all records for fighting game tournaments; it was nearly fifty percent higher than last year's Evo which was the previous record holder with more than fifty percent more unique viewers," said DiPietro in a statement.

"Starting last year, we grew to the point where we were exceeding the capacity of the biggest ballrooms in Las Vegas," said Cannon. "That's why we started to have to charge for seating on Sunday, when everyone wants to come in and watch the finals. We had to have some way of determining who's going to get in and who's going to be left outside."

The games featured in this year's tournament included Super Street Fighter 4: Arcade Edition v. 2012, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter X Tekken: 2013 Edition, The King of Fighters XIII, Injustice: Gods Among Us, Persona 4 Arena, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, and Super Smash Bros. Melee. Melee almost didn't make the cut due to Nintendo's restrictions on online streaming. Evo co-founder Joey Cueller told OneMoreGameTV that Nintendo tried to pull game from the tournament altogether, but reversed its decision due to the online backlash.

DM.MCZ|Xian took down MCZ|Tokido in the Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition grand finals, winning 3-0. Xian played with Gen, while Tokido chose Akuma. Xian had Tokido locked into a losing battle and didn't even let Tokido win a single match, unlike their earlier matchup. The full list of Evo 2013 champions follows: